Members Club (2024) by Marc Coleman

Director: Marc Coleman

Year: 2024

Country: United Kingdom

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Witchcraft; Horror/Comedy

Plot:

Realizing that they’re going nowhere, a middle-aged male strip routine takes a last-ditch gig at a remote club in the middle of the woods, but when they realize they’ve walked into a witch coven looking to use them to resurrect their dead leader must find a way to stop their plans.

Review:

Overall this was a fairly enjoyable low-budget genre outing. Among its better features is the strong and generally effective setup that provides this with a lot of likable factors. The main feature involving the genre mashup about the down-on-their-luck team of friends trying to relive their glory years in a failing stripping troupe but unable to recognize what’s happening to their lives because all they have is the group so the need for taking the mysterious gig is a major opportunity for them to take. That brings about the early stages where the group’s delight at the presentations and different pleasantries waiting for them while waiting for the show is a lot of fun making the setup rather enjoyable as we also get the darker features involving the secret activity of their charges making the plans for the sacrifice. These are bent together quite well and make everything come together rather nicely in a strong overall setup.

That allows the series of more intriguing haunting action to have a lot of fun here. Featuring the generally fun starting point of the suspected dance going awry and realizing that the entire thing with the strange job and bizarre conditions for everything was a ruse for their impending sacrifice in a ritual to resurrect a long-dead witch the coven worships, there’s a fantastic amount of fun here involving the bizarre antics presented within here. As the coven tries to keep their own members in line when they begin questioning everything since these distractions allow a chance for the men to gather themselves and escape, the ensuing scenes of them bring based around the club encountering not just the revived witch with very specific means of trying to gather the rest of the group in her power but the other coven members trying to help her in carrying out their deadly plans. Featuring some great practical effects for the kills, solid laughs with the wild situation, and a fun pace that holds everything together, this one has plenty to like about it.

There are some issues here that bring this one down. Among its few drawbacks is the unnecessary and dragging plot-point about the daughter being involved in the ceremony when she has no reason to be there. The whole thing reeks of trying to create a sense of tension by having a secret child involved in the coven that adds a wrinkle to the experience just for the sake of adding one which is the wrong way of going about this, much like the idea of using it to bring about an attempt at parenting commentary on the situation but everything here is just not that interesting to see a parental relationship like this play out in the middle of what’s going on. The other factor here is the confusing reason why the traitor turns to the group for help with this section providing another unnecessary means of keeping this going by providing something to quibble over before the final confrontation. Otherwise, there’s not much else to hold this one down.

Overview: ****/5

A really fun if slightly flawed genre effort, there’s so much to like here that it manages to help overcome just a few nagging areas that might hold it down. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of this style of genre effort, appreciate the approach taken, or are curious about it while most others out there should heed caution with it.